You might have heard: a mobility revolution is in the making. TechCrunch is here for it — and we’re not just along for the ride. We’re here to uncover new ideas and startups, root out vaporware and dig into the tech and people spurring this change.
In short, we’re helping drive the conversation around mobility. And it’s only fitting we have an event dedicated to the topic. TC Sessions: Mobility — a one-day event on May 14, 2020 in San Jose, Calif., that’s centered around the future of mobility and transportation — is back for a second year and we’re already putting together a fantastic group of the brightest engineers, investors, founders and technologists.
TechCrunch is excited to announce our first two guests for TC Sessions: Mobility.
Drum roll, please…
We’re excited that Boris Sofman, engineering director at Waymo and former co-founder and CEO of Anki, will join us onstage. But wait there’s more. TechCrunch is also announcing Nancy Sun, the co-founder and chief engineer of Ike, will be a guest at TC Sessions: Mobility.
Here’s a bit about these bright and accomplished people.
Sofman is leading the engineering for trucking at Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that is now a business under Alphabet. Sofman came to Waymo from consumer robotics company Anki, which shut down in April 2019. Nearly the entire technical team at Anki headed over to Waymo.
Anki built several popular products, starting with Anki Drive in 2013 and later the popular Cozmo robot. The Bay Area startup had shipped more than 3.5 million devices with annual revenues approaching $100 million.
Previously, Sofman worked on off-road autonomous vehicles and ways to leverage a machine learning approach to improve navigational capabilities in real time.
Sun has also had an incredibly interesting ride in the world of automation and robotics. She is chief engineer and co-founder of Ike, the self-driving truck startup. Prior to Ike, Sun was the senior engineering manager of self-driving trucks at Uber ATG, a company she came to through the acquisition of Otto.
Prior to Otto, Sun was engineering manager of Apple’s secretive special projects group.
Stay tuned to see who we’ll announce next.
And … $250 Early-Bird tickets are now on sale — save $100 on tickets before prices go up on April 9; book today.
Students, you can grab your tickets for just $50 here.